Supporting social work placement students – Townsville Citylibraries and James Cook University Case Study 2023-24

A chance meeting and conversation between Townsville Citylibraries and James Cook University staff at an Emergency Management forum in 2023 provided the groundwork for how we could forge a potential partnership to support the needs of our diverse community during challenging times.

From that initial conversation, Townsville Citylibraries embarked on a partnership with James Cook University (JCU) to host a social work student placement.  This type of placement is a generalist placement rather than specific, whereby no individual casework is conducted.  Our aim was to explore the emerging area of social work and public libraries while ensuring that students are able to achieve their practicum goals within our spaces.

The regular duration for social work placement is 500 hours, which equates to approximately 14 weeks (if undertaken full-time).  As the placement hours are significant, ethical issues needed to be considered, in particular: the high number of social work students who experience placement poverty; and the need to ensure a placement opportunity that maximises student learning and development in their chosen field.  To assist with mitigating these risks, we built relationships with the placement team at JCU through regular communications and conducted desktop research.  These strategies worked to ensure that both organisations had a shared understanding of the possibilities and limitations of social work placement in our public library setting.

The first step to implement the initiative was an expression of interest (EOI) forwarded to the university.  The EOI contained details of the type of activities that the student will be involved in during their engagement with Citylibraries.  These activities were divided into four phases as informed by (Wahler et al., 2022):

1. Phase One: Orientation to Citylibraries mission and goals, resources and information about social work / library partnerships as an emerging field.
   1. Phase Two: Micro (individual level): Review of community services and resources within the library.
   1. Phase Three: – Mezzo (group): Developing plans / activities for the customers to support health and wellbeing.  Note: plans may / may not be delivered to customers, instead a group of staff can act in role play scenario.
   1. Phase Four: – Macro (organisational): Building on Phases One and Two, reviewing scope for resources, connections, engagement opportunities staff and customers to support health and wellbeing with the focus on social work / library partnerships.

Once a student selects the library as their placement site, their CV and cover letter is forwarded to the library contact (who acts as the student’s library supervisor).  Our next step is to set up a meeting with the student with three staff members.  This meeting is conducted in a way similar to an interview so the student can meet with staff from different areas as well as experience what it is like to begin work in our library.  At this meeting the student is asked about their expectations, goals and ways they would like to approach their practicum.  As there is no social worker at our library, the university provides two external supervisors that work in conjunction with the library contact.

Our placement experience in 2023 was successful.  The student was diligent and passionate about learning and understanding the role of public libraries in supporting individuals and communities.  They developed their own learning goals (based on the four phases in the EOI) and regularly met with their library contact to ensure they were on track to complete their practicum successfully.  The student embraced all opportunities provided and attended outreach programs and spent a significant amount of time with staff and customers.  We ensured that risks were mitigated as much as possible in terms of safety and both physical and compassion fatigue.  The student conducted staff surveys to learn about their experiences and understandings of the role of social workers in libraries and identified other areas that they were considering exploring throughout their degree. 

Library staff also experienced significant benefits through shared customer engagement experiences with the student, along with gaining insights through shared learnings, survey results and provided a deeper understanding of the challenges experienced by our clientele and the community, along with development of support strategies which assist in enhancing our customer interactions. With the practicum semester about to commence, Townsville Citylibraries are looking forward to hosting another student in 2024 and would encourage other Queensland public libraries considering exploring this initiative in their local areas.

If you would like any additional information, please contact Dr Donna Goldie or Nicole Hunt.

Dr Donna Goldie, Coordinator – Learning & Information and Nicole Hunt, Team Manager, Townsville Citylibraries

Reference:

Wahler, E. A., Ressler, J. D., Johnson, S. C., Rortvedt, C., Saecker, T., Helling, J., Williams, M. A., & Hoover, D. (2022). Public library-based social work field placements: Guidance for public libraries planning to become a social work practicum site. Public Library Quarterly, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/01616846.2022.2044264